AHEAD OF THEIR TIME:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN ILLINOIS

By Mark W. Sorensen

(A similar article was published in the March 1997
edition of LifeTimes, a monthly publication of Blue
Cross/Blue Shield of Illinois)

Her marble image stands in the cool recesses of Statuary
Hall in the United States Capitol. During the dedication
ceremony on February 17, 1905, she was eulogized as
Illinois' most eminent citizen, as worthy of honor as
Lincoln, Douglas or Grant. But 35 years earlier, as this
bespectacled, former one-room school teacher rode the train
across the frozen prairie to Springfield, few would have
guessed that Frances Elizabeth Willard would be the first
woman in the nation to have her statue in the nation's
Capitol.

Willard, along with other members of the newly formed
Illinois Woman Suffrage Association, traveled to the state
capital in February 1870 in order to convince the Illinois
Constitutional Convention to include universal suffrage into
the proposed document. Buoyed by petitions to the General
Assembly which favored female suffrage, the thirty year-old
Willard declared: "The idea that boys of 21 are fit to make
laws for their mothers, is an insult to everyone."
Unfortunately, after Willard and her allies left town, the
delegates received almost an equal number of petitions
against the issue, including one from 380 Peoria women who
protested "having the ballot thrust upon them." In May, the
convention followed the pattern set by the 15th Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution and drafted a document that provided
suffrage for all adult males, including Negroes, but not for
women.

Although before the Civil War most women could not vote
or hold office in any of the states, language which
specifically described voters as "male" did not appear in
the federal constitution until 1868. When Illinois entered
the Union in 1818, its constitution, like those of the other
20 states, expressly gave the vote only to "white, male
inhabitants above the age of twenty-one years." Illinois'
second constitution, adopted in the Jacksonian Era of 1848,
allowed men to vote for a greater number of officials than
had the previous constitution, but it still excluded women
from using the ballot.

The national women's rights movement was officially born
that same year in the state of New York. In July, three
hundred men and women (derisively referred to as "Amazons"
in some press reports) gathered in a small church in Seneca
Falls to discuss women's civil and legal rights. Of the
twelve declarations adopted, the only one to pass without
unanimous approval was: "It is the duty of the women of this
country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the
elective franchise." The nascent woman suffrage movement was
led by Easterners Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Coffin
Mott.

Like most of the early women suffragists, Stanton and
Mott were well-educated, married, religious liberals, and
involved in the abolitionist movement. (Although sharing the
other attributes, Susan B. Anthony, who joined the movement
in 1851, never married.) Stanton especially rejected the
notion that women were inferior or subservient to men as was
implied in Biblical scripture. Contrary to St. Paul's
admonition that "women keep silence" and "be in subjection,"
Stanton began her married life by insisting that the word
"obey" be omitted from her wedding vows. She latter wrote
that the history of mankind was a history of repeated
injuries on the part of men toward women, its objective
being "an absolute tyranny over women."

In Illinois, as in most of the Western states, the
women's suffrage movement was started by women who had spent
their formative years in the East, and who often had the
moral support of their spouses. The state's first documented
speech in favor of women's suffrage was made in by Mr. A.J.
Grover, editor of the Earlville Transcript. His talk
inspired Mrs. Susan Hoxie Richardson (a cousin of Susan B.
Anthony) to organize Illinois' first woman suffrage society.
Another transplant to LaSalle County who supported the
suffrage cause at the same time was Prudence Crandall. A
school teacher in Mendotta, she had been forced to flee
Connecticut because she taught Negro girls in her school.
Crandall worked in Illinois as an early advocate of the
enfranchisement of both black and white women.

But the Civil War and its upheaval of society brought an
abrupt end to the efforts the fledgling suffrage movement.
Women all over the county and in all social positions took
on even more responsibility of running the household,
managing money and being involved in public affairs. Many of
the suffragists turned their energies and organizational
skills to assisting the government with war relief.

In Illinois, Mary Livermore and Jane Hoge were appointed
co-directors of the Chicago branch of the Sanitary
Commission, a relief agency which provided supplies to
soldiers and operated battlefield hospitals. Although
originally opposed to votes for women, the war convinced
Livermore that suffrage was the key to many of the social
reforms that she felt were needed.

However, the phrase "woman suffrage" was still very
unpopular and produced visions of "Amazons" from New York.
Livermore and others could remember that the first time that
Susan B. Anthony came to speak in Chicago, the event was
held under the pretense of a temperance meeting in Quinn
Chapel (the city's oldest African American Church) because
"none but a colored church ... would open its doors to a
woman speaker."

In February of 1869 Livermore's associates staged a
suffrage meeting at the same time one was being held a block
away by "Sorosis," a newly formed woman's organization. The
Chicago Tribune reported that women obviously didn't
have the capacity to govern since they couldn't even agree
on planning a common convention. They predicted that "The
public will now be annoyed for six months by the
characteristic ill humor of a lot of old hens trying to
hatch out their addled productions." While admitting that
Livermore's group was intelligent and business-like, the
Times sarcastically stated that the appearance of the
Sorosis convention "was the best argument for woman
suffrage, the men being ladylike and effeminate, the women
gentlemanly and masculine."

The Livermore faction, full of distinguished clergymen
and educators and hearing addresses from both Anthony and
Stanton, organized themselves into the Illinois Woman
Suffrage Association and elected her president. Within a
month she created the Agitator, a suffrage newspaper,
and by September, Livermore established local associations
in Aurora, Plano, Yorkville and Sandwich. However, after the
movement was defeated in getting Illinois' new constitution
to include universal suffrage in 1870, Livermore returned to
Massachusetts where she continued to work for social reform
and women's issues until her death in 1905.

Because another constitutional convention could not
legally be called in Illinois for twenty years, members of
the movement began a push for changes in individual laws.
While universal suffrage was set back, gains in specific
woman's rights were accomplished. Through the efforts of
Alta Hulett, Myra Colby Bradwell, her husband Judge James
Bradwell and others, laws passed between 1860 and 1890
included women's right to control their own earnings, to
equal guardianship of children after divorce, to control and
maintain property, to share in a deceased husband's estate
and to enter into any occupation or profession. This
included becoming an attorney, even though women could not
legally sit on Illinois juries until 1939.

In 1873 Judge Bradwell secured the passage of a statute
which allowed any woman, "married or single," who possessed
the qualification required of men, to be eligible for any
school office in Illinois created by law and not the
constitution. Even though they couldn't vote for themselves,
in November 1874 ten women were elected as County
Superintendents of Schools.

Probably the two most important people in the Illinois
suffrage movement during this time were Elizabeth Boynton
Harbert and Frances E. Willard. Active in the Indiana and
Iowa movements before moving to Illinois, Harbert helped
keep the Illinois association alive by serving as president
for a total of twelve years. She was a prolific writer as
well as founder and first president of the Evanston Women's
Club. Her early writings stated that both women and society
were injured by pushing children into stereotypical sex
roles that confined females to the “women’s sphere.” She
thought that this practice condemned a woman to a
non-productive lifetime of dependence on others.

However, Harbert ‘s later writings admit that perhaps
women did have some virtues and traits that were typically
characteristic of her sex, such as purity, charity and
fidelity. She wrote that women were “born to soothe and to
solace, to help and to heal the sick world that leans upon
her.” Therefore, giving women the vote would allow them to
fulfill their natural nurturing function. In essence,
Harbert’s writings exemplified the whole movement’s shift
from an elite intellectual pursuit for justice, to a
middle-class reform movement that would benefit society.

Illinois’ most famous reformer of this period was
undoubtedly Frances Willard. After her first experiences
with the Illinois legislature, Miss Willard returned to
Evanston where she served as President of the College for
Ladies and later Dean of Women at Northwestern University.
In 1874 she resigned her position and became totally
immersed in the temperance movement that was sweeping the
country. She helped establish the anti-liquor Women’s
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and eventually served as
president of the Chicago, state and national organizations.
She became a believer that giving women the sacred ballot
was the only was to get rid of the demon spirits that were
ruining the American family.

On March 24, 1877 , seventy women of the Illinois WCTU
presented the General Assembly in Springfield a petition
signed by 7,000 persons asking that no licenses to sell
liquor be granted that were not asked for by a majority of
citizens of that location. Failing in their efforts to
influence the legislature, they returned in 1879 and
presented petitions signed by 180,000 who favored what was
termed the “Home Protection” bill -- a proposed law that
would put liquor sales under local control and allow women
to vote in these referenda. On March 6 of that session,
Frances Willard became the first woman ever to stand at the
speaker’s podium and address an official session of the
Illinois General Assembly. With rolls of Home Protection
petitions cascading from the galleries to the House floor,
Willard pleaded the righteousness of her cause. Although
more of the men were polite than rude, the bill never
passed.

Despite these defeats, the suffrage and temperance
movements kept coming back every two years in an effort to
obtain some form of female franchise. In 1891 (a year after
Wyoming became the first state to give women full voting
rights) the 37th General Assembly was informed by a petition
from Jackson County women that they and the “vast majority”
of Illinois women did not want the vote. Since they belonged
to that class of women who kept their own homes and took
care of their own children, they were perfectly content to
let their fathers, husbands and sons vote for them. However,
many other petitioners agreed with the women citizens of
Pittsfield who demanded “the right and privilege of voting
in Municipal elections “as a means to better government and
that we may no longer be subject to the control of besotted
men and the vicious classes.”

Illinois women finally received limited franchise rights
on June 19, 1891 when the state legislature passed a bill
that entitled women to vote at any election held to elect
school officials. Since these elections were often held at
the same time and place as elections for other offices,
women had to use separate ballots and separate ballot boxes.
Subsequent Illinois Supreme Court cases also allowed women
to serve as, and cast ballots for University of Illinois
Trustees. This resulted in Lucy Flower becoming the first
woman in Illinois to be elected by voters state-wide in
1894.

A little known side-light in the history of Illinois
suffrage is the story of Ellen Martin of Lombard. Many
history books relate that on November 5, 1872 hundreds of
women tried to vote in the Presidential election. The most
famous of these was Susan B. Anthony who was arrested,
convicted and fined for her effort. Refusing to pay the $100
she stated, “Resistance to Tyranny is obedience to God.”
However her vote was not counted. On the other hand, “Lady
Lawyer” Martin knew how to read state law. Many Illinois
towns had special charters of incorporation written into law
just before the 1870 state constitution was ratified. While
all specifically gave the vote only to males, Lombard’s
(perhaps unknowingly) stated that “all citizens” above the
age of 21 who were residents shall be entitled to vote in
municipal elections. Accordingly, Martin “wearing two sets
of spectacles and a gripsack,” went to her polling place
with a large law book and fourteen other prominent female
citizens. When they demanded their right to vote, allegedly
the judges were so flabbergasted that one was taken with a
spasm and another “fell backward into the flour barrel.” The
judges however eventually ruled in her favor and the first
15 female votes in Illinois were tabulated on April 6, 1891.

Another Lady Lawyer who kept the suffrage movement fueled
in its darkest days was Catharine Waugh McCulloch. In 1890
she became the legislative superintendent of the renamed
Illinois Equal Suffrage Association. For the next twenty
years she kept pressure on the General Assembly to approve a
law that would allow women to vote in Municipal and
Presidential elections. However she constantly faced
opposition from both individuals and organized groups.

One apparently very frustrated man wrote the Illinois
Senate expounding on his view that all suffragists secretly
hate men and that giving them the vote would ruin the
family. They were after all he wrote, “the sex which has
accomplished absolutely nothing, except being the passive
and often unwilling and hostile instruments by which
humanity is created.” During this era of labor unrest and
mass immigration, a representative of the “Man Suffrage
Association” wrote to his Illinois Senator and claimed that
every socialist, anarchist and Bolshevist was for woman
suffrage.

Representing the distaff side of the anti-forces was
Chicago homemaker Caroline Fairfield Corbin who founded the
Illinois Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to
Women in 1897. She believed that women should stay in their
“sphere” of home life and allow their husbands and fathers
to legislate for their protection. She viewed woman suffrage
akin to socialism and fought both movements with religious
zeal. Every time the suffragists tried to advance, she and
her organization tried to push them back arguing that most
women were opposed to obtaining the vote.

After 20 years of fruitless petitioning to change the
state’s laws, the Illinois (as well as the national)
association began to change their tactics and their allies.
After 1900, more and more women’s clubs and labor
organizations endorsed some form of woman suffrage
legislation. Between 1902 and 1906, the Illinois Federation
of Women’s Clubs endorsed several municipal suffrage bills,
including one that exempted women who couldn’t vote from
paying taxes (an argument first put forth by Susan B.
Anthony in 1872). Organized labor attended a joint
Congressional hearing in Washington in 1912 and heard
witnesses testify that in Chicago, striking garment workers,
cashiers at Marshall Fields, female school teachers, and all
other working women needed the ballot for their own safety
and economic protection.

On a separate occasion, a New York state senator said
that he feared that women would lose their “feminine
qualities” if given the vote and forced to deal with the
world of cigar smoke and politics. A suffrage leader
wondered why he wasn’t concerned about the women who worked
in the foundries, or standing fourteen hours a day in the
laundries. “Surely these women won’t lose any more of their
beauty and charm by putting a ballot in a ballot box once a
year than they are likely to lose standing in foundries or
laundries all year round.”

Beginning in 1910, the state association decided to go
visit the masses instead of trying to get audiences to come
to meetings. In July, McCulloch, Grace Wilbur Trout and
others began making automobile tours around the state. A
special section of the July 10th edition of the Chicago
Tribune detailed the plan of four woman speakers accompanied
by two reporters, to visit 16 towns in 7 Northern Illinois
counties in 5 days. Chicagoan Trout was supposed to give the
opening address and make the introductions. The other women
were to speak about the legal aspects, laboring woman’s
viewpoint and the international situation regarding
suffrage. Reflecting the tension that often existed between
different factions, McCulloch later criticized Trout for
speaking much too long and dominating the tour.

In 1912, Grace Wilbur Trout, head of the Chicago
Political Equality League, was elected President of the
state organization. She abandoned the confrontational style
of lobbying the state legislature and began to strengthen
the organization internally. She made sure that a local
organization was started in every Senatorial District. One
of her assistants, Elizabeth Booth, cut up a Blue Book
government directory and made file cards for each of the
members of the General Assembly. Trout only allowed four
lobbyists in Springfield and tried to persuade one
legislator at a time to support suffrage for women.

During the 1913 session of the General Assembly, a bill
was again introduced giving women the vote for Presidential
electors and some local officials. With the help of
first-term Speaker of the House, Democrat William McKinley,
the bill was given to a favorable committee. McKinley told
Trout that he would only bring it up for a final vote if he
could be convinced that there was sentiment for the bill in
the state. Trout opened the flood gates of her network, and
while in Chicago over the weekend, McKinley received a phone
call every 15 minutes day and night. On returning to
Springfield he found a deluge of telegrams and letters from
around the state all in favor of suffrage. By acting quietly
and quickly Trout had caught the opposition off guard.

Passing the Senate first, the bill was brought up for a
vote in the House on June 11, 1913. Trout and her troops
counted heads and literally fetched needed men from their
residences. Mrs. Trout actually guarded the door to the
House chambers and urged members in favor not to leave
before the vote, while also trying to prevent "anti"
lobbyists from illegally being allowed onto the House floor.
Getting the votes of all 25 first-term Progressives and the
3 Socialist Party members, the bill passed with six votes to
spare, 83-58. On June 26, 1913, Governor Dunne signed the
bill in the presence of Trout, Booth and union labor leader
Margaret Healy.

Women in Illinois could now vote for Presidential
electors and for all local offices not specifically named in
the Illinois Constitution. However, they still could not
vote for state representative, Congressman or governor; and
they still had to use separate ballots and ballot boxes. But
by virtue of this law, Illinois had become the first state
east of the Mississippi to grant women the right to vote for
President. Carrie Chapman Catt wrote:

"The effect of this victory upon the nation was
astounding. When the first Illinois election took place in
April, (1914) the press carried the headlines that 250,000
women had voted in Chicago. Illinois, with its large
electoral vote of 29, proved the turning point beyond which
politicians at last got a clear view of the fact that women
were gaining genuine political power."

Besides the passage of the Illinois Municipal Voting Act,
1913 was also a significant year in other facets of the
women's suffrage movement. In Chicago, African American
anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the
Alpha Suffrage Club, the first such organization for Negro
women in Illinois. Although white women as a group were
sometimes ambivalent about obtaining the franchise, African
American women were almost universally in favor of gaining
the vote to help end their sexual exploitation, promote
their educational opportunities and protect those who were
wage earners. On March 3, 1913, over 5000 suffragists
paraded in Washington, D.C. When Wells tried to line up with
her Illinois sisters, she was asked to go to the end of the
line so as not to offend and alienate the Southern women
marchers. Wells feigned agreement, but much to the shock of
Trout, she joined the Illinois delegation once the parade
started.

As the suffragists started down Pennsylvania Avenue, the
crowd became abusive and started to close in, knocking the
marchers around. With local police doing little to keep
control, the cavalry was called in as 100 women were
hospitalized. Many suffragists now concluded that public
protests might be the quickest route to universal franchise.

In June, 1916, many Illinois women were among the 5000
who marched in Chicago to the Republican National Convention
hall in a tremendous rainstorm. Their efforts convinced the
convention to include a Woman's Suffrage plank in the party
platform, and got Presidential candidate Charles Evans
Hughes to endorse the proposed constitutional amendment to
the U.S. Constitution. Three years later Congress finally
passed the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. First introduced in
Congress in 1878, it stated simply:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by
any State on account of sex."

On June 10, 1919, Illinois became the first state to
approve this amendment. Ratification by the 36th state,
Tennessee, came 12 months later and the 19th Amendment to
the Constitution took effect on August 26, 1920. This made
the United States the 27th country to allow women universal
suffrage.

National President Carrie Chapman Catt proposed the idea
of a "League of Women Voters" as a memorial to the departed
leaders of the Suffrage cause. The next year the National
American Woman Suffrage Association was disbanded and the
League of Women Voters was founded on February 14 at the
Pick Congress Hotel in Chicago. Present at the creation were
suffragists Jane Addams, Louise de Koven Bowen, Agnes
Nestor, Wells-Barnett, Haley, McCulloch, and Trout. Gone but
not forgotten were the women who first led the way: Lucy
Stone, Anthony, Stanton, Livermore, Willard and countless
others. On November 15, 1995, a simple plaque was dedicated
in recognition of their efforts in the Illinois State
Capitol next to the statue of Lottie Holman O'Neill of
Downer's Grove; the first woman elected to the Illinois
General Assembly.